October 19, 2010

The Kryha Cipher Machine. 1929 [Quick Post]

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1169

[I wrote an earlier post on this blog on ciphers here: Books of Shadows—"Trithemius, Bacon, Porta, & Falconer vs. a Make-Believe Derrida on How to Make Something Unintelligible. Secret Writing and Ciphers".]

The Kryha ciphering/enciphering machine was invented by Ukranian Alexander Kryha (d. 1955) and was capable of coding about 350 characters a minute. It was used to enforce secrecy in business transactions, and was used in conjunction with (at least) Siemens telegraphic equipment. I found these images (except for the patent drawings) of the Kryha machines in several issues of the Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig) for 1929, all of which are unusual and evidently not findable as good copies online--and so I'm simply reposting them here.

Portrait of the inventor--(I've not seen this before):

Ditto the workshop, which look smuch different here than I would've imagined: